


a stranger to your soul

by paperiuni



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mild Praise Kink, Mild Voice Kink, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 22:42:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14482788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: In which Alec can't take a compliment, Magnus sets out to do something about it, and Alec is entirely too easy for Magnus.





	a stranger to your soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jillyfae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jillyfae/gifts).



> For a lovely new fandom friend on her birthday ♥
> 
> This is set around 3.03 or so—after the Idris question in the premiere but before the acute angst about the current myth arc plot begins. I thought we could all use some schmoopy porn in these trying times.

Magnus drew Alec's tee-shirt off over his head, looked down at him, and said, as if half to himself, "You're so beautiful."

Alec's throat seized up with something more complicated than want. "Okay."

"I wonder," Magnus continued, more conversationally, his fingers a tender promise of ruin on Alec's throat, "how many compliments it's going to take for you to believe even one."

They lay side by side on the bed that bore the marks of an enthusiastic bout of making out: cushions knocked loose from the pile under the headboard, Magnus's waistcoat cast over the side after Alec's sweater, a constellation of discarded rings reflecting the flames of the candles. There was now a handful of tea lights flickering on the nightstand, populating the ceiling with hazy, interlaced shadows. Alec had stopped questioning such things as mood lighting appearing out of nowhere under Magnus's roof.

Accepting that seemed easier than letting Magnus voice his aesthetic appreciation of him, at any rate.

"It's not—" Magnus leaning over him, with his shirt unbuttoned and the feel of his mouth still on Alec's own, did not help his clarity of thought. "If you say so, I believe you."

"Mm-hm." Magnus let Alec cut him off with a kiss. Alec tugged at his shirt, then let the silk slide from his fingers, trying to backtrack to the carefree mood of a moment ago. As much as he liked sex—a messy, magnificent series of discoveries that hadn't quite evened out into _normality_ yet—the part where they could get distracted by kissing for a languid half-hour was good, too. Too good to botch by choking up over nothing.

"I don't mind," he mumbled into the last of the kiss. "Just, I'm not used to it."

" _That_ is a terrible flaw in the state of things," Magnus said, just as low. His fingers drew a line along Alec's chest and stomach, steady as an arrow's flight, making him suck in a breath. "You should be told how wonderful you are at least daily."

Alec laughed before he could think about why. His muscles shivered under Magnus's questing hand. "You think, huh? Got somebody in mind for the job?"

Humor mingled with something rougher in Magnus's voice, the words nearly pressed into Alec's cheek. "I may have to nominate myself." He kissed Alec's jaw. "To be sure it's—" His breath on the spot he'd kissed made Alec buck against him, toes curling into the sheet. "Done properly."

If Alec let his imagination run away with all the things Magnus had _done properly_ to him and with him, he'd be gone by the time Magnus got him undressed. He raised his hips at Magnus's prompt, but retaliated by pulling Magnus in to slant kisses along his neck, damp and artless. Magnus made a particular sound that balanced between a laugh and a groan, one that never failed to wake heat in Alec.

"Alexander." For a moment it went nowhere, hanging in the air as Magnus turned to look at Alec.

"I do like that," Alec said, ahead of his better judgment. "The way you say my name." Nobody else really called him _Alexander_. Nobody shaped the sounds of it like Magnus did.

"I know." The affirmation was gentle. Magnus shifted, as if to return to his task of stripping Alec of his pants, but then magic whispered along his skin, depositing the rest of his clothes somewhere nearby. Magnus had never managed to lose anything yet. Alec had to give him that.

"I guess my subtlety wasn't one of those good things you were gonna tell me about." Something softened the grip of his fingers as he drew Magnus down, close, to share a ragged breath before either of them spoke.

Magnus covered Alec's hand on his neck with his own. "My dear, you deserve poetry." Right then Alec couldn't, for the life of him, tell how much of that was facetious. He flushed a little, anyway. "I'm afraid spontaneous verse isn't among my many talents, so I have another suggestion."

"Yeah?" Alec felt Magnus's nearness like a zing of electricity, a shimmer of warmth from his body curved above. He'd only have to wrap an arm around him to pull them together.

Grasping Alec's hands, Magnus pressed them once, then tucked them up by his head. His eyes shone, amber and amused, but his expression wasn't all whimsy. "You lie back, and I put my mouth to good use."

"No hands?" Alec returned the squeeze, unthinking. Maybe he'd just gotten into the habit. The observation at least diverted him from the dizzying flare of desire Magnus's words sent through him.

"Okay." Magnus's smile crooked. "That makes it more of a challenge, but that's fair."

 _I didn't mean it like that_ , Alec nearly corrected. His head seemed to swim. It wasn't the first time they'd planned ahead: Magnus tended to check with him about any new thing, and sometimes he enjoyed the surge of assurance and anticipation it gave him to know, even in broad strokes, what was to come.

This time he wasn't sure.

He folded his fingers together behind his head, though it implied a nonchalance he didn't feel. Magnus had returned to watching him with the same unhurried scrutiny as earlier. Alec's muscles twitched to interrupt him with a kiss; his mouth molded the start of some bad joke that'd release the thrumming tension.

He did nothing. Tilted his head back. Licked his own lips.

"That," Magnus said, sounding rusty, "is horribly distracting."

"You're just looking." If Alec had been a suave person, he'd have said _Like what you see?_ and done it smoothly, but he probably hadn't managed any degree of casual. He could feel his cock thickening, slowly, lazily, simply because Magnus was looking, his eyes fey and gleaming in the half-light.

"At you." Kissing Alec's shoulder, Magnus, true to the condition, braced a hand on the bed beside him. "At you on my bed, naked and glorious. Waiting for me." His voice dropped. "I didn't think anyone was, and then you came along."

Whatever Alec wanted to say, his throat thick with too much feeling, Magnus stole his reply with another kiss to his collarbone, then a third, a fourth, points of wet pressure laid like brands on his skin.

Magnus's teeth rasped against his nipple, jolting his breath and his cock alike. Pushing up into the sweet slick press of Magnus's mouth that followed, Alec tamped down the impulse to reach for him. No grasping for one another, no entangling limbs and letting urgency overtake purpose. Not this time.

"You're breathtaking." Magnus rested his head on Alec's chest. "I regret you don't seem to know it, but—" he sparked with sudden devilment "—it's my joy and privilege to tell you."

Each word, careless and glittering, seemed to shorten Alec's breath. He clutched at a fistful of bedding. "God, Magnus, I want—"

He didn't know what. But the wanting filled his body with fire, a slow gentle flame threading into every nerve.

"Shall I go on?" Magnus twisted in between his legs, and Alec made room for him half on instinct. His hands brushed Alec's sides but never landed on his skin.

"Yeah." Alec strained a little to make the word clear. Usually Magnus needed a few more tricks than this to make him lose his composure so far. "Please."

"Good." When Magnus glanced up, his eyes were tender and knowing, and Alec had to avert his own. In the next second he jerked up, squirming at Magnus dragging the taut tip of his tongue down the center of his chest. The movement became lingering, lapping strokes, then breathy half-kisses, as Magnus worked his way to the exposed line of Alec's hip.

"Maybe—maybe I'm glad it's just your mouth. I might live through this."

"Do you know the most rewarding part of testing your stamina?" Magnus drew out the question until it sounded doubly as dirty. "It's that you never give in. All that grit and patience. The way you will not quit until you're sure it's been good for both of us."

Alec grabbed a cushion blindly, crumpling it in his fist so as to hold on to something. "I thought that was standard proc—procedure." Was that a real word? Magnus was hardly touching him and he still might fly apart at a particularly stiff breath.

"There really isn't a selfish bone in your body, is there?"

"There's two hundred and six of 'em. A couple might not bend over backwards."

Magnus laughed, a hoarse, rolling sound, his head bent down. "You have no idea how remarkable that makes you, Alexander." He drew back, knees shuffling against the linen.

 _Remarkable. Beautiful._ Alec had used those terms to describe Magnus, more than once, but that was Magnus. They were, if anything, inadequate for him.

He was about to say something of the kind when Magnus, peering up as if to make sure Alec saw him, sucked at the head of his cock. And held it, just inside the heat of his mouth, with the barest slide of friction and movement.

What were words again. Who knew. Alec made a noise that probably rated as ridiculous, a deep guttural groan, unmuffled since his fingers had dug themselves into whatever bits of the bed they could reach. With a single sharp pull on the tip, Magnus broke away, which was better, as Alec could breathe, and worse, as Magnus had stopped.

"And on a note of shallow admiration, you have a gorgeous cock."

"Oh, my god," Alec burst out, stubborn laughter in his epithet. He'd utterly forgotten himself and it was okay. "I knew it. You only—only wanted me not to go to Idris 'cause you'd miss my dick, is that it?"

"The rest of you has its merits." Magnus didn't miss a beat. "But if I had to choose between imagining how it is to have you fuck me slowly in the morning, or having you here to do it, it wouldn't be much of a competition." Then, as fire uncoiled in Alec at the thought—at the not-distant memory of what Magnus described—Magnus licked him again, a long, curling line.

He fought back the urge to thrust into the caress, to bury his hand in Magnus's hair and beg him to get on with it.

"Good thought, though," he muttered. "Or—that night I rode you in the armchair, which was a really bad idea, and then on the floor."

The moan Magnus made around his cock was worth the effort of putting the sentence together. "The plan was for me to talk you into orgasm, not the other way around."

"Oh, that's what you were doing?" Alec said, as if that'd been obvious. His whole body wanted to tense around the wicked warmth of Magnus's mouth, whether it promised relief or more drawn-out teasing.

"Mmm, not quite. Coming without being touched is an art in itself." Magnus said that with the same lightness he'd use for some curious detail of a potion he was brewing. "Though, I'm sure, not one that'd be beyond you."

"Look, if you're not gonna improvise poetry for me, I might—might not come for you at your word tonight." The image of it, though, burned ember-like in his stomach, not a flash but a lingering glow.

"Well, hero of my heart," Magnus said, and his left hand opened at Alec's hip as if to stroke the skin there, "let's not rush a good thing."

Alec unfolded his hand and took Magnus's, the shiver in his fingers calmed by Magnus's steady grip. "It's not gonna take much."

"I know." Magnus's smile was somehow both smug and tender, dim under the dancing candles. He never let go of Alec's hand as he settled again, his breath glancing hot and sharp against Alec's skin. "One way or another, I will have you come for me."

This was what it took: Magnus's mouth on him, stoking his need to a single consuming rush that threw him into a silent, tight arch to ride it out, bright, heady, barely on the better side of too much. Magnus held his hand until he fell back into the sheets and ran his thumb over the ghosts of old scrapes on his knuckles.

Then, when minutes had slid by in slow sequence, Alec put his free hand behind Magnus's head, the fine hairs at his nape damp with sweat, and tugged him into a kiss. Though it was gentle, he trembled against it.

"You said a lot of nice things about me," Alec said. "I'm thinking they're not worth much unless I prove them true."

Magnus let himself come down, to lie with the lines of his body falling into Alec's, angles to angles, skin to skin. "If you're so determined, I suppose I'll have to bear witness."

Alec kissed him again, and tumbled him down into the bed, to make good on his word.

**Author's Note:**

> Vienna Teng is the current sound of my inspiration so I keep plucking titles from her lyrics.
> 
> I am on [tumblr](https://poemsfromthealley.tumblr.com/)!


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